ALL OUT! March 20 anti-war actions

Published Mar 11, 2010 9:59 PM

U.S. imperialism’s crimes against the
Iraqi people are so great that no amount of lying in the corporate media can
wipe them out. That doesn’t stop these manufacturers of instant
misinformation from trying. They have hypocritically presented a patently
fraudulent election, held under an occupying power and administered by a puppet
regime, as a sterling example of democracy and courage.

There are still nearly 100,000 U.S. troops in Iraq seven years after the
illegal aggression, plus an equal number of “contractors” —
mercenaries. The U.S. occupation has left more than 1 million dead and created
5 million refugees. It has exacerbated ethnic and religious differences leading
to the brink of a partition of the country. Its puppet regime has been
pressured to pass laws turning over Iraqi natural wealth to imperialist
concerns, thus sowing the seeds of a potential civil war.

But the corporate media, by apparent prior agreement, writes glowingly of
Iraqis dipping their fingers in ink as if the election were a proof of Iraqi
sovereignty.

All the more reason why anyone who opposed this war at the beginning, and the
millions more who want it over with now, should head to the protest in
Washington or other regional centers on March 20 to make their voices as strong
and dramatic as they can.

Just as in the days of war criminal George W. Bush, a Republican, U.S. wars and
occupations continue in Iraq under the Democratic Party administration, even
expanding in Afghanistan and stretching into Pakistan. The Pentagon is also
intervening in Somalia and Yemen and continually threatening Iran, with or
without a first strike by the Israeli military. Not to speak of other
interventions threatened in the Caribbean, South America and the Pacific.

In this period, the workers in the United States have been hit with the worst
capitalist recession since the 1930s — one in which a short-lived
recovery for the stock market has brought no recovery to the job market,
despite colossal bailouts to the banks and brokerage houses by the Obama
administration. This crisis at home has focused attention here on the desperate
economic questions facing the working class and oppressed peoples.

But there is no way to separate the need to fight imperialist war from the need
to struggle on basic economic issues. The two struggles must be carried on
simultaneously and intertwined.

The March 20 demonstrations, in Washington, Los Angeles and San Francisco,
called by the Answer Coalition to mark the seventh anniversary of the criminal
U.S. invasion of Iraq, raise the slogans: U.S. Out of Afghanistan and Iraq;
Free Palestine; Reparations for Haiti; and Money for Health Care, Jobs and
Education. Many other anti-imperialist, anti-war, community and progressive
organizations have endorsed these actions, including the International Action
Center and the Bail Out the People Movement.

Workers World has endorsed them, too, and calls again upon the working-class
and progressive people to mobilize participation in them throughout the
country.

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